


Glowing Embers

by azula_apologist



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:07:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25325881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azula_apologist/pseuds/azula_apologist
Summary: After the end of Book 3, Azula is institutionalized and Ty Lee joins the Kyoshi warriors. However, it is far from the end of their relationship.
Relationships: Azula/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	1. Under the Banyan-Grove Tree

A few weeks after Firelord Ozai was defeated, the Kiyoshi girls went on a warrior’s retreat. 

Ty Lee was glad for a distraction from the guilt that had plagued her since she betrayed Azula. Mai didn’t seem to have a shred of remorse, but Ty Lee couldn’t help feeling bad. Especially when she passed the institution where her old friend was kept.

For the retreat, Suki borrowed Appa and took the girls to the Swamp. There, they practiced new fighting forms and meditated by the Banyan-Grove Tree, the swamp’s spiritual center. At night, they camped out in sleeping bags on its roots.

By the dim light of the moon filtering through its branches, Suki and Ty Lee stayed up talking about boys. 

Boys had always been a topic of interest for Ty Lee, having grown up with six other girls. She used to crave male attention so badly, she’d climb up onto the roof of their mansion to watch the village boys strutting by, ponytails cut short and shirts neatly ironed.

When Mai revealed she had a crush on Zuko, Ty Lee was thrilled. The two spent hours gossiping about him, stopping only when Azula was around. For a while, Ty Lee was content to live vicariously through Mai’s feelings for Zuko. But eventually, she needed more. 

When she was 11, she got one of her sisters to cover for her and snuck out at night to meet a nice, non-bending boy named Quang. She took him to her favorite spot under Lu Ten bridge and kissed him before hurrying back home so her parents wouldn’t find out.

“Seriously?” Suki whispered, propping her head up on an elbow. “Your first kiss was at 11?”

“Well, not my first kiss,” Ty Lee said.

Suki raised an eyebrow.

“My first kiss was actually Azula.”

“What?!” asked a girl named Xing-Xing from the sleeping bag on the other side of her.

Ty Lee giggled. “I’m sorry. I was trying to talk quietly.”

“We don’t care!” another girl named Miwa exclaimed. “We’re all awake. We just wanna know how it happened between you and that... monster.”

“She’s not a monster,” Ty Lee muttered, too quiet for any of them to hear. “Well anyways, it happened at a sleepover when we were both pretty young.”

Several gasps were heard, mixing with the noises of the night.

“But why?” Suki’s eyebrows knitted with confusion.

“It was her idea. She said she wanted to practice, you know, for boys.” Ty Lee explained.

“Did she make you do it?” Miwa asked.

“No! She asked both of us. Me and Mai. Mai said no but I said yes. I was curious. I’d never kissed anyone before, you know?” Ty Lee briefly became lost in the memory.

When the murmurs died down, they moved on to talking about Suki’s love life. Ty Lee was careful not to mention the crush she’d once had on Suki’s boyfriend, Sokka. She’d moved past it, though she did still envy their perfect relationship.

She envied Suki for getting to be with someone as handsome as Sokka. And sometimes, she also envied Sokka for getting to be with someone as beautiful as Suki, though of course she would never admit it. The thought only occurred to her once in a while.

It occurred to her that night under the banyan tree, when Suki’s face, pale even without her makeup, seemed to glow in the moonlight. The same way Azula’s had that night on Ember Island when they all sat around the fire. So bright, it looked like pearl.


	2. Black Tea

When they returned from the retreat a few days later, Ty Lee felt better than she had in ages. Even Mai, who normally hated the sight of happiness, said she was relieved to see Ty Lee wasn’t sad anymore when they met for tea at the palace.

“You could tell I was sad?” Ty Lee asked, eyes brimming.

“Yeah, you weren’t rambling about auras every two minutes,” said Mai. “I almost missed it.”

“Well today my aura is a light rose-petal-pink!” Ty Lee proclaimed.

“I said almost.” Mai dumped a spoonful of sugar in her tea.

“So... how have things been with you and Zuko?”

“They’ve been great. There were perks to dating the crown prince, but they don’t compare with the perks of dating the Firelord.”

“Wow, I bet! Do you guys have like, banquets every night?” Ty Lee imagined lavish platters piled high with her favorite foods- fireflakes, fresh fruit, and custard egg tarts.

“Well, I don’t get to see him every night. He’s often busy with kingdom duties.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ty Lee. She knew what it was like to not get enough attention.

“It’s honestly better this way,” Mai admitted. “You know me. I need my space. I love Zuko, but if I was around the guy all the time I think I would end up knifing him.”

“You sound like Azula,” Ty Lee joked, and then instantly regretted saying it. 

She looked down into her cup of tea. It pained her to realize that, even after so much healing, she still bore scars from the lifelong friendship that ended so bitterly. And unlike her tea, the bitterness was not something that could be sweetened away.

“How’s Azula doing anyway?” she asked, knowing Mai would have the inside scoop.

“Not great,” said Mai. “She’s barely been eating the food at the institution, and one of the guards said he heard her talking to herself. Zuko went to see her yesterday but I don’t think it went well. He wouldn’t even tell me what happened.”

For a second, Mai’s dark eyes softened. Mai’s grey aura was always static, but not her eyes. Could it be she secretly feels bad about Azula too? Ty Lee wondered. It was only fair after all they had been through.

She thought back to when the three of them had been inseparable. Azula was the eader from the beginning. Ursa used to say that Ty Lee and Mai followed her around like a couple of turtle ducklings following their mother. 

Mai claimed she only followed Azula because she was afraid of her, afraid she would treat her the way she treated her brother. But Ty Lee knew there was more to it. Something about Azula’s demeanor made them admire her, even if Mai didn’t like to admit it. 

Azula was beautiful, but her beauty was different from the girls whose faces adorned brush-painted posters advertising various make-up products. Her beauty was powerful. It made you both want to be her, and to please her.

Underneath it all, though, Azula was just a girl. A girl who had once been their best friend. 

“Anyway,” Mai changed the subject abruptly. “How was the retreat?”


	3. Visitors

The first few weeks, Azula had been in denial. 

When she finally accepted what had come to pass, she still held onto the naïve hope that she would find some way to escape.

She had watched the guards carefully, waiting for one of them to betray a sign of weakness. They wore fireproof gloves to slide her food through the slot in the door. Food fit for peasants. Azula ate it at first only because she thought she would need her strength to escape.

But now, a month in, she realized it wasn’t going to happen. And even if it did, what did she have to live for anymore? She was a failure. Her own brother was less pathetic than she was. She tried to tell herself this was just a fluke, that she’d get out and find allies to fight and reclaim what was rightfully hers. But she was just so tired. 

And on top of that, her mother had been talking to her.

“Azula,” said the woman in the metal wall, somehow managing to make her name sound like the gentleness of an ocean wave lapping the shore.

“Go away. You’re dead.” Azula reminded her, turning away from her warped reflection.

“But I’m still alive,” the woman said. 

“Shut up.”

“I live inside of you.”

“Well then you won’t be alive much longer.” Azula had been contemplating how she would do it. Lightning would be the quickest way to go. She figured if she gave a bolt all the juice she had left in her, it would ricochet off the metal walls until she was no more.

“Why are you thinking about ending your life darling?” Her soft voice stung somewhere deep inside Azula. “You’re so young.”

“I’ll be sixteen in a few weeks,” Azula pointed out. “I suppose I’ll be turning sixteen in here. What an atrocity.”

“I remember your fifth birthday,” Ursa’s voice took on a dreamy tone. “All the girls from your class at the Fire Nation Academy for Girls came to celebrate.”

“They came because they had to. We were royalty.”

“Ty Lee and Mai didn’t just come because they had to,” Ursa said.

This made Azula so angry she hurled a fireball at the blurry outline of a woman before her. “They did! They did! They never cared about me. Just like you never cared about me.”

“Azula...” Ursa’s voice had grown even softer.

“You remember what happened at the end of my birthday, don’t you? When I got into a fight with that stupid commoner girl and started to use bending on her. You grabbed my arm and pulled me away and told me off in front of everyone. You humiliated me. On my birthday. I’ll never forget it.” she hurled another fireball at the wall out of sheer frustration.

Before Ursa could respond, Azula heard a shuffle outside the door of her cell. Which was odd because it was late and a guard had already shoved her evening food tray through the slot.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, turning away from the wall.

“Azula?”

Instead of her mother’s voice, it was another traitorous voice Azula knew all too well.

“Get away from here before I zap you into oblivion,” she said.

“You won’t hurt me,” Ty Lee responded. “I know you won’t hurt me.”

Azula’s derisive laughter echoed around the room.

“I came to talk to you,” said Ty Lee.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Why don’t you hear her out?” Ursa asked.

“Are you serious?” Azula retorted. “This is the girl that stabbed me in the back. Or rather, jabbed me in the back.” She chuckled bitterly at her own joke. “Why would I hear her out?”

“Who are you talking to?” Ty Lee’s voice made Azula feel a deep ache in her chest as if she was being betrayed all over again.

“None of your business,” Azula snapped. She knew Ty Lee couldn’t hear Ursa. Ursa spoke to her alone. 

There was a pause. For a moment, Azula thought Ty Lee might have left, but then she heard a faint sigh through the door.

“What do you want from me?” Azula demanded.

“Nothing. I was just...” there was a pause. “Well, I was worried. Mai told me you haven’t been eating. And one of the guards said you’d been talking to yourself...” her voice wobbled with what sounded like concern, but Azula knew was fake.

“What it’s to you anyways? You don’t care about me. You made that abundantly clear.” 

“I do care about you. I came because I felt awful about everything that’s happened. And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it...” Ty Lee trailed off.

Azula scoffed. “So you’re here to set me free then?”

“I can’t do that,” Ty Lee admitted. “But maybe if you start changing and getting better-”

“Enough. I don’t want to hear it.” They must have sent Ty Lee because they knew Azula had a soft spot for her. Zuzu’s idea, no doubt. To make her turn on her principles like he had. Well, she wasn’t weak like him.

“She’s here to make amends,” said Ursa.

“She’s not.”

Ursa didn’t respond.

“Azula-” Ty Lee began.

“Go away. I don’t want to hear either of you.” She clamped her hands over her ears and sat on the floor, rocking back and forth.

Ty Lee’s words became garbled. But for some reason, Ursa’s voice still came through no matter how hard she covered her ears. 

“You’ve known Ty Lee since you were three years old. I’d never seen you care about another person that way before, not even your own brother.”

“Both of you be quiet!” Azula screamed and unleashed a bolt of lightning so blue and brilliant that for a second, the entire room filled with light. Then, the light was gone and all Azula saw was darkness.


	4. Alone at last

“Please wake up.”

Azula opened her eyes and saw a face that filled her with warmth. But as she came to her senses, that warmth was replaced by rage. She reached out to translate the rage into a flame, but her hand wouldn’t budge. Her arms were bound down to her sides with a leather strap. 

She was laying on a white bed in a room with white walls and a white ceiling.

“What on earth is going on?” she demanded.

Ty Lee sighed. “You hit yourself with lightning. You almost died.”

Azula struggled to recall the incident that had brought her here. The color blue was still burned into the backs of her eyelids. And her entire body felt like it was shivering although she wasn’t moving a muscle.

Just then, a dark-skinned woman wearing the unmistakable furs of a water tribe healer walked into the room. “You’re awake,” she said. “Good. You’re lucky your friend here got to you in time.”

“She’s not my friend.”

Azula did a quick mental calculation. She knew the medical wing was located in the west, close to the outskirts of the city. And the security here was considerably lower, since the workers were counting on the fact that the patients would be in poor shape to escape.

The plan was beginning to form in her mind. She turned to the healer. “You. I’m in pain. Go and fetch me another pillow to put under my back.”

The woman nodded and started towards the door when Azula added, “And while you’re at it, a bowl of rice and some libation. Ideally cucumber water.”

“Anything else?” the woman sounded irritated.

“A hot compress,” Azula said as an afterthought. Three things. That ought to keep her busy.

“Whatever will help you feel better,” the healer shrugged, glancing at Ty Lee.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her,” Ty Lee said.

The healer nodded and left the room. 

“Well,” said Azula, smiling. “Alone at last.”


End file.
